nowave
June 22nd, 2009, 08:27 PM
Dear Mr King,
I'm a 22 year old scottish man. Rage came out before I was born. The first book by you that I read was Carrie, and I immediately devoured anything of yours I could get my hands on. At 16 years old I found the Bachman Books, and immediately fell in love with the entire collection. The Long Walk was darkly beautiful, while The Running Man was a perfect piece of science fiction.
But my favorite of the four books would have to be Rage. When I read it, I was going through a dark time in my life and, i'll be the first to admit, my loathing for the people I attended school with could have rivalled any of your characters.
After reading Rage, my entire viewpoint on school changed.
So, years later, out of curiosity and my surprise at never seeing it sold individually I looked it up online, and found you'd withdrawn it from sale.
Now, I'm not criticising. I've read some of the things you've said on the subject, and I do understand why you felt you had to do it.
What I want to tell you is that for some, Rage was a wonderfully life affirming book.
For me, the point was never Charlie Decker shooting people, or taking his classmates hostage. It was the catalyst only, for the events that I found truly important in the book. The events that happen between those students in that classroom. The ways that their barriers begin to come down, and they realise they're not all as different from each other as you imagine when you're in high school.
We're all just folk in the end, with our fears and dreams and desires and terrors.
So I guess my point is this. Don't always think of school shooters when you think of that book. Maybe once in a while, instead, you can think of the depressed 16 year old from Scotland who's life you made better with it.
Yours,
Alex
I'm a 22 year old scottish man. Rage came out before I was born. The first book by you that I read was Carrie, and I immediately devoured anything of yours I could get my hands on. At 16 years old I found the Bachman Books, and immediately fell in love with the entire collection. The Long Walk was darkly beautiful, while The Running Man was a perfect piece of science fiction.
But my favorite of the four books would have to be Rage. When I read it, I was going through a dark time in my life and, i'll be the first to admit, my loathing for the people I attended school with could have rivalled any of your characters.
After reading Rage, my entire viewpoint on school changed.
So, years later, out of curiosity and my surprise at never seeing it sold individually I looked it up online, and found you'd withdrawn it from sale.
Now, I'm not criticising. I've read some of the things you've said on the subject, and I do understand why you felt you had to do it.
What I want to tell you is that for some, Rage was a wonderfully life affirming book.
For me, the point was never Charlie Decker shooting people, or taking his classmates hostage. It was the catalyst only, for the events that I found truly important in the book. The events that happen between those students in that classroom. The ways that their barriers begin to come down, and they realise they're not all as different from each other as you imagine when you're in high school.
We're all just folk in the end, with our fears and dreams and desires and terrors.
So I guess my point is this. Don't always think of school shooters when you think of that book. Maybe once in a while, instead, you can think of the depressed 16 year old from Scotland who's life you made better with it.
Yours,
Alex